By L. WEBSTER FOX, M.D.

Medical science, as taught in our medical colleges to-day, has two objects in view: (1) the prevention of disease; (2) the amelioration of disease and its cure. Some of our advanced thinkers are suggesting a new mode of practice, that is the prevention of disease by proper hygienic measures. Chairs are being established and professors appointed to deliver lectures on hygiene. Of what value is the application of therapeutics if the human economy is so lowered in its vital forces that dissolution is inevitable? Is it not better to prevent disease than to try the cure after it has become established, or has honeycombed the constitution?

These few preliminary remarks are apropos to what is to follow in the subject which I have selected as the topic for discussion this evening.

Vision is the most useful of all the senses. It is the one gift which we should cherish and guard the most. And at no time in one's life is it more precious than in infancy and youth.

In infancy, when the child is developing, the one great avenue to the unfolding, or more properly speaking, the development, of the intellect is through the eye. The eye at this period holds in abeyance all the other senses. The child, when insensible to touch, taste, smell or hearing, will become aroused to action by a bright light or bright colors, or the movement of any illuminated object, proving to all that light is essential to the development of the first and most important sense. Again, the infant of but six days of age will recognize a candle flame, while its second sense and second in importance to its development - hearing - will not be recognized for six weeks to two months. Taste, touch and smell follow in regular sequence. Inasmuch as light makes thus early an impression on the delicate organ of vision, how necessary it behooves us to guard the infant from too bright lights or too much exposure in our bright climate. Mothers - not only the young mother with her first child, but also those who have had several children - are too apt to try to quiet a restless child by placing it near a bright flame; much evil to the future use of those eyes is the outgrowth of such a pernicious habit. Light throws into action certain cells of that wonderful structure of the eye, the retina, and an over stimulus perverts the action of those cells. The result is that by this over-stimulation the seeds of future trouble are sown. Let the adult gaze upon the arc of an electric light or into the sun, and for many moments, nay hours, that individual has dancing before his vision scintillations and phosphenes. His direct vision becomes blurred, and as in the case of a certain individual I have in mind, there may be a permanent loss of sight. Parents should take the first precaution in the child's life, and not expose it to a light too bright or glaring. When in the open air let the child's eyes be protected from the direct rays of the sun.

While it is impossible to give all children the advantage of green fields and outdoor ramblings, yet nature never intended that civilization should debar the innocent child from such surroundings.

An anecdote is related of a French ophthalmic surgeon, that a distinguished patient applied to him for relief from a visual defect; the surgeon advised him to go into the country and look out upon the green fields. The green color with its soothing effect soon brought about a restoration of vision. What I wish to illustrate by this anecdote is that children should be allowed the green fields as their best friend in early life. It tones up the system and rests the eye. After outdoor exercise and plenty of it, we should turn our attention to the home surroundings of our little ones. The overheated rooms of the average American home I am sure have more to do with the growing tendency of weak eyes than we feel like admitting. Look at these frail hot-house plants, and can any one believe that such bodies nourished in almost pestilential atmosphere can nourish such delicate organs of vision, and keep them ready for the enormous amount of work each little eye performs daily? The brain developing so rapidly wills with an increasing rapidity the eye to do increasing duties; note the result - a tendency to impoverished circulation first, and the eye with its power to give the brain a new picture in an infinitesimal short space of time means lightning-like circulation - the eye must give way by its own exhaustion.

Civilization is the progenitor of many eye diseases.

After a boy has grown to that age when it becomes necessary for him to begin the education prescribed by the wise men, obstacles are placed in his way to aid again in causing deterioration of vision. It is not so much the overcrowded condition of our school rooms as the enormous amount of work that causes deterioration of sight. Our children begin their school life at a time when they are too young. A child at six years of age who is forced to study all day or even a part of a day will not run the same race that one will who commences his studies at ten - all things being equal. The law prescribes that so much time must be devoted to study, so many forms must be passed, so many books must be read, so many pages of composition written - all probably in badly lighted rooms, or by artificial light. Note the effect. First, possibly, distant vision gives way; the teacher, sympathizing with the overburdened child, tries to make the burden lighter by changing his position in the room or placing him under the cross light from a window; as the evil progresses, the child is taken to an ophthalmic surgeon, and the inevitable result, glasses, rightly called "crutches for the eyes," are given.

What would be thought of a cause which would weaken the legs of that boy so that he would have to use crutches to carry him through life? If civilization be responsible for an evil, let our efforts be put forth in finding a remedy for that evil.